


Fear of Falling

by fallovermelikestars



Series: Love and the Logical [2]
Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 19:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1060707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallovermelikestars/pseuds/fallovermelikestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Chris remembers the most about kissing Darren is how it always felt like that first downward drop on a rollercoaster, exhilarating and terrifying all at once, and how he always wanted to cling on tighter than he knew how to.</p><p>When he kisses Will it feels like coming home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear of Falling

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this came from, except that these three boys are so pretty and I just wanted to play. This is fiction, with a capital FICTION.   
> Thanks and so much love, as always, to G- for the beta, for the hand-holding, for even looking at this at all. I love you girl.

“I’ve invited Darren for dinner,” Will says one evening, apropos of nothing. Chris looks up from where he sits on the sofa with his laptop perched on his lap, legs stretched out and ankles crossed on the coffee table.

He’s been operating under the guise of working but really he’s been watching cat videos on YouTube, and he doesn’t know who he’s fooling – it’s certainly not Will who keeps leaning over the back of the sofa to snort with laughter in Chris’s ear before meandering away again, back to the kitchen to stir whatever needs stirring. And it’s not himself because, well, there’s only so many times you can watch a kitten fight its way out of a paper bag before you have to admit that all you’re doing is procrastinating.

Now Will stands at the end of the sofa, self-satisfied grin on his face and tea towel thrown over his shoulder. Chris pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose and looks at his boyfriend quizzically. Will practically coos – he has this _thing_ about Chris in his glasses, lost in his fairy tale world and taking a moment to come back to reality - calls Chris adorable, which Chris is adamant he is _not_ , thank you very much. He smiles back at Will regardless, can’t not smile back at him, and he wonders if it will ever fade: the now-familiar tugging sensation in his chest every time his eyes meet Will’s, like butterflies, like panic, like pure, unadulterated _joy._ Like falling.  Chris wonders if he will ever stop falling.

"You’ve invited Darren for dinner?"

"Yes."

" _Just_ Darren?"

And it’s not like that’s a problem, necessarily, it’s just that the dynamic is different when there’s no Mia to balance them out. It might all be in Chris’s head – it probably is – but it feels like there’s been something heavy and cloying in the air between the three of them this summer and he’s not entirely sure whether it’s a good or a bad something.

There’s always been a certain degree of _want_ , knotted and twisted, deep in the pit of Chris’s stomach when it comes to Darren, something raw that he struggles to identify. While they’ve never out and out _talked_ about it, Will has been dropping these hints lately that make Chris think that maybe that _want_ could become _have_. It just makes his stomach twist harder because that would mean crossing a line they could never go back from; Chris knows enough to know that it’s something he has to be _sure_ about, knows enough to know that fantasy and reality are rarely the same. He swallows, gives himself a mental shake: Will’s just suggesting _dinner,_ not some wild sex party.

"Well, Mia’s out of town next week. I didn’t want him to be lonely."

"Darren’s never lonely," Chris retorts, with a fond roll of his eyes. "Have you even met him? He is _surrounded_ by people. Also it’s a little forward of you, Sherrod, to be inviting people over for dinner when you don’t even live here officially."

Will smiles so hard his eyes crinkle and Chris feels a swoop of affection for this gorgeous, wonderful man.

"Who gives a fuck about officially?" he says with a wink, and Chris laughs. "Maybe I don’t live _here_ , but when those papers are signed, baby."

"When those papers are signed," Chris agrees, fingers automatically burying in Brian’s fur as the cat leaps to the sofa and curls into a ball, radiating warmth against Chris’s thigh. "Half the new place will be yours and you can invite whoever the hell you want for dinner."

"’Til then I’ll just invite Darren."

~~

 

"Will says you’re coming to dinner," Chris says in lieu of hello as Darren opens his trailer door, stepping aside with a grin to let the man in.

"Spaghetti bolognese," Darren says in response, as though it _is_ a response, flopping onto the sofa and patting the seat beside him. He runs his other hand over his face in a gesture that Chris completely understands.

It’s kind of a relief to be in this enclosed space. However impersonal the trailers always feel, it’s nice right now to have a space to just _be_. They’ve only been back at work for a few days and already Chris is wondering how the rest of this season is going to pan out: they’re all on edge, every single one of them only a hair’s breadth away from falling apart. It’s going to take some getting used to. He’s immeasurably glad that he has the storyline he has to come back to – that it’s loud and over-the-top and with Darren. He kind of wants to talk about it, but at the same time he really, really doesn’t. It feels safer to stay on neutral topics of conversation – they’re only 4 hours into what could easily be a 16-hour day, and that’s an awfully long time to have to not be a mess.

"Bastard." Chris is familiar with his boyfriend’s pasta. "I have to pay him in sexual favors to get him to make that for me."o

Darren cackles, _cackles_ , says, "Gotta say one thing for your man, Colfer, he’s not fucking stupid," and Chris has to swallow hard because just like that the atmosphere shifts, there’s suddenly a tension that wasn’t there before. Chris can’t _not_ remember the first year they’d been on tour together, can’t _not_ remember stolen kisses and handjobs; muffled orgasms and too-small bunks; making Darren fall apart with his mouth and falling asleep curled together on the nights they had a hotel bed.  

He exhales shakily, the assault of feelings and memories hitting him from nowhere. The weight of Darren’s hand on his leg startles him. "Man, Chris, you look like you’ve seen a ghost."

He kind of feels like he has, too. It had been a throwaway comment, just a joke, a light-hearted nod to the fact that Darren always said Chris deserved a gold medal in giving head, but at the same time it’s a reference to something that no longer exists, a past they’ve fought to keep just a past.  

What happens on tour stays on tour for the most part. For the last year or so it’s definitely been so, but now they’re here. They seem to be ending up here more and more often and Chris is as emotional as fuck right now anyway. Darren might as well have said, " _Remember when you used to suck my cock_?” Chris wonders what it is about Darren Criss that makes him _want_ so badly.

"Well," he says, forcing a smile – two can play at that game – "It’s not exactly a hardship. I may pretend to want a bowl of pasta more often than I really do."

Darren grins.

 

~~

 

Dinner’s actually okay.

Normal.

Not at all the weird kind of tense things had been the last time it was just the three of them, after Chris and Will had shown up unannounced to Darren’s tour and, to put it simply, Chris had ended up a _mess_.

After too many weeks of not really seeing Darren at all then seeing him on stage like that, alive in ways Chris doesn’t get to see normally, and then finding himself wrapped in Darren’s arms in the dressing room afterwards… It had kind of undone him. Will had just grinned the whole time, ribbed him in the way that only Will ever does. Chris still doesn’t know exactly why, but somehow he’d felt like he was teetering on some kind of knife edge.

That night he hadn’t wanted to order food at all, was originally quite content to sip a diet coke in the diner that Darren had suggested they hit up before heading back to their respective hotels. Meanwhile Darren and Will had gorged themselves on burgers and fries and dicked around. Chris’s stomach had been doing somersaults – adding late night diner food to that equation didn’t seem all that sensible – but Will had tutted in a manner not dissimilar to Chris’s _grandmother_ and ordered him a large portion of  fries (the seasoned ones, the type that Chris can never turn down when a plate is set in front of him). Darren had smiled at him, all twinkling eyes, and hooked his foot ‘round Chris’s ankle beneath the table.

It had been torture, Darren dunking his fries in his milkshake and talking a mile a minute and Will pressed alongside Chris, thigh to thigh. All he’d been able to think about was taking them both back to the hotel.

This is better than that – or perhaps not _better_ exactly but certainly different and certainly easier.

This is just like friends.

This is Will’s spag bol and a bottle of nice red wine Darren brought with him because he’s fucking sophisticated – and don’t look at him like that, Mia’s not the only one with fucking class around here. It’s easy chat while they eat before they head through to the living room. Will has set up Chris’s old Wii, which they’d unearthed in the first pre-move declutter and which Chris would have put it in the charity box had it not been for Will’s declaration that "goodwill begins at home.” He and Darren high five over Chris’s head when Will holds Mario Kart aloft. Chris rolls his eyes like he doesn’t actually want to play and Will and Darren smile indulgently like they believe him, then promise him he can be the dinosaur. It’s raucous then, laughter and curse words and bumping of hips and shoulders. When Chris hands over the controller, fills up their wine glasses and tucks himself against Darren’s side as he battles Will in a final race for victory, Darren inches a little bit closer and Will looks over at them with a fond smile that Chris is one glass of wine too far in to think about. It feels nice and it feels easy and it feels natural; does anything matter, really, more than that?

~~

Chris remembers watching Naya in rehearsals for“Mine”last year, back before things got really serious between Will and him; when they were still just dating; when he thought that things could possibly become what they are now but he still wasn't brave enough to say it; and when Darren would still sleep over, dark curls on Chris's pillows, compact frame clad in one of Chris's shirts. They didn't get off anymore but Chris still fell asleep with Darren's breath warm on the back of his neck.

_You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter; you are the best thing that's ever been mine._

It had been a weird time to have a moment of clarity, watching Naya do her thing as he prepared for Kurt and Blaine to shatter hearts the world over, but it’s not like he has any control over these things. Suddenly there it was, there was a choice to make: Darren had never really been his and Will wanted to be. _Chris_ wanted Will to be. Chris made his choice and he chose Will. It wasn't settling, not at all – it was Chris taking a leap of faith, putting all he had into this clever, witty, sexy, older man that wanted all of him, made him feel like he wasn’t just some _kid_ – and he hasn't regretted it, not once.

That same day he’d found Darren in a trailer and told him he was seeing someone. Darren hadn’t been surprised in the least. When they'd hugged goodbye at the door it had felt like the start of a brand new chapter.

The thing is that even with the strongest will in the world Chris isn't equipped with the ability to turn off whatever feelings he has for Darren.  Even now, a year on and as he falls more in love with Will every damn day, they're always there, just simmering below the surface: affection, attraction, this need to touch and be touched.

It's so fucking confusing.

Chris wonders if there's something really obvious that he's missing because despite his intelligence, sometimes he thinks he's a bit dense, wonders if there's a hidden meaning behind certain topics of conversation that are always started by Will and that always leave Chris with his heart beating a little too fast, his mouth a little too dry. They leave him feeling a little more uncertain than he'd like, because he likes to be sure, is always so sure of this – of them – and of Will. And yet.

_And yet._

“Do you know...” Will says one day, when they're unpacking the last of the boxes in the new house, “–that Darren and Mia have an open relationship?" He's removed his shirt so Chris is finding it hard to concentrate on what he's saying and where things are supposed to go, nevermind both simultaneously. Will is gorgeous, so gorgeous, and they’re here in this house that they bought together – this is Chris's life now, with this man that loves him.

"What? No they don't." And they don't. Chris _knows_ that.

What they have – or had – is an understanding that long distance relationships are fucking hard and an agreement that they didn't whore around while she lived in New York and he in LA. Being with people that they cared about was okay; Mia had a guy she spent time with in New York and Darren, well, _had_ _Chris_. He doesn't know what they have now that Mia's in LA:  he’s never dared to ask, isn't sure it's a good idea to know, and it's kind of irrelevant anyway since he and Will don’t have any open kind of anything. Chris thinks that's kind of the way he likes it: it's solid and secure and real, it's a hand in his and a smile that's just for him. Someone who gets him on every single level, someone that makes him feel sure and safe. That makes him _love._

"They kind of do, though. I mean you told me he was seeing her when he and you, you know, fucked."

Chris flushes and doesn't know why and shrugs one shoulder. “We never fucked, I _told_ you that." Chris knows it’s just semantics but whatever, it still feels kind of weird to talk with Will about his past romantic entanglements. "And I know they had an… arrangement. Things change, though."

“Well that hasn’tchanged. Just so you know." Will crawls forward on his knees and leans in for a coffee-flavored press of his lips to Chris's. Chris wants to ask him what exactly he means but then his own shirt is tugged up and over his head and well, talking can wait.

Afterwards, when they’re sweaty and sated and Chris is laying in the cocoon of Will’s arms, it strikes him that he just had mind-blowing sex off the back of an almost-discussion about Darren and Mia. While he’s never going to _complain_ about mind-blowing sex, he has to admit that it’s a little bit weird.

"It’s a little bit weird," he says, pressing a kiss to the part of Will’s chest he can reach without having to move. He feels loose-limbed and happy, that strange kind of charged-yet-exhausted he only ever feels after a really great orgasm.

"What is?"

Fuck, this is really bizarre pillow talk.

"That we did this" – another kiss to the same spot and Will drags his fingers through Chris’s hair – "right after your ‘ _Hey Chris, Darren and Mia have sex with other people_.’ Technically we just had sex because of a conversation about Darren’s sex life."

"Technically," Will points out, "we got together in the first place because of a conversation about Darren’s sex life. And it was never a precursor to sex; I thought I’d tell you in case you were interested and then I thought I’d fuck you because I like the noises you make when you come."

"Do you want me to be interested?" Chris is genuinely curious, has no idea what Will has been getting at earlier or right now. Is Will saying he would have no problem with Chris inviting Darren into their bed, either with or without him? Chris isn’t sure how he wants to feel about that.

Will shrugs beneath him and tightens his hold on Chris a little. "Well," he says, "I am aware there’s different strokes for different folks, and I’m aware of your thing with him. So. Are you?"

"I’m with you," Chris says, aware that this is in no way an answer to Will’s question. He hopes that this isn’t one of those times that Will is going to pull him up on his blatant avoidance of the issue, that instead Will can quietly accept that Chris is avoiding said issue for a reason and just kiss him.

This is a situation that Chris doesn’t understand and doesn’t know how to tackle at all, a situation that leaves him feeling like the ground is uneven beneath his feet – it’s far from his favorite feeling. His head is swimming with Will and Darren and past and present and future, and all these _feelings_ are fighting for dominance and leaving him not knowing how he really feels at all.

Except about Will, he always knows how he feels about Will.

The rest of it just makes him feel weird.

The thing is, Chris knows that until sexuality becomes as irrelevant as eye color, he’s never going to conform to the relationship status quo – he doesn’t even want to – so perhaps he should put less stock in what society deems to be acceptable in any other sense.

He also knows that all he has ever really known is monogamy.

He loves Will, he wants to be with Will and therefore he should be faithful to Will. That’s just the way it works.

It’s the way it works for _him_ at least. Or he thinks it is, although it had been something else entirely with Darren, but that was up to Darren and Mia. Chris knew what he was getting himself into.

Chris always knew Darren was never going to be his happy ever after. Back then he was always too blinded by _want_ to care much about the implications of being the third (fourth?) person in a relationship. He was young, and he was horny, and he pretty much lived on a tour bus. There were different rules back then.

Now he has Will and Will _is_ his happy ever after and Chris doesn’t want to risk that, no matter that his breath still catches when he catches Darren’s eye, when Darren’s face lights up in a smile that’s just for Chris.

There is a big difference between fantasizing about having Will and Darren right here in this bed, and actually putting that into practice. Besides, being with someone who isn’t Will when they’re in a fully committed relationship – they just bought a goddamn _house_ – is cheating, isn’t it? Unless you have a relationship like Mia and Darren’s, which they don’t. And even if Will says it’s okay, says he _wants_ it even, Chris still has a whole boatload of issues to contend with, one of the biggest being that he doesn’t want Will to ever think he is anything less than enough; Will is plenty, he’s more than Chris ever dared dream of.

It’s enough to make his chest ache and his head pound. Chris’s life is enough of a circus already, he  just wants things to be uncomplicated. "I’m with you," he says again, burying his head in the sand like a pro. Even without looking he knows that Will is smiling at him.

"Yeah, that you are," Will agrees, and tilts Chris’s head up to kiss him.

 

~~

 

"What are you doing here?" Chris rests the half-opened door against his hip and gives Darren a look. They've had this conversation so many times before, the one where Chris points out that it’s polite to call before you turn up unexpectedly at somebody's house, even if you do bring beer.

As it so happens, beer is exactly what Darren holds aloft as though it’s his answer. He smiles a smile that doesn't reach his eyes; well, Chris kind of knows why he's here, truth be told. He nods his head and reaches out a hand to take the six pack, wants to reach out a hand for Darren too but doesn't trust himself to ever let go.

“Baby, who was at the... Oh hey.” Will rounds the corner and grins as he pads towards them, holding out a fist to Darren to be bumped. He looks between them before saying, “I'm gonna go out, see if some of the guys want to shoot some pool."

“You don't have to," Chris says. He knows Will’s plans had involved staying in, marathoning some of the TV that's piled up in their box.

“I know," Will says softly, toeing on his worn old sneakers and leaning in for a kiss. He squeezes Darren's arm as he passes. “I'll see you later, alright?"

Chris just loves him so damn much.

Then he's gone and Darren's closing the door behind him and kicking off his shoes. Chris still just wants to hold him, even more so when Darren gives him a lop-sided smile and says, “So that fucking blew."

Chris watches him from a few yards away, could close the gap if he wanted but instead just tugs at the hair at the nape of his neck and says, “She's so brave."

He feels his throat begin to tighten again – fuck, he didn’t think he even had any tears _left_. He doesn’t ever want to think about this last couple of weeks again, isn’t sure he’s going to be able to watch the screening without falling apart, but at the same time knows he has no choice. It’s all just so…awful.

“Open those beers." Darren’s voice is a little scratchy too - he curls his hands into fists and unfurls them slowly, finger by finger, as though he’s counting. “I don't think I can talk about it. I think I just need to decompress for a while, you know?"

Chris knows.

 

"It must be nice," he says later, casually, more for something to say than anything else. It’s not that the silence is awkward, but he doesn’t want it to become so, and he’s been wondering about this, kind of, ever since Will brought it up the other day. "...to have Mia here all the time now."

It’s not cold in the house – this is LA and it’s technically still summer – but Chris has grabbed a blanket from the pile anyway, and they sit at opposite ends of the sofa, facing each other with ankles tangled and the blanket spread over both their laps. It’s just the right amount of closeness after the day they’ve had. Chris absolutely doesn’t want to be alone, but he’s not sure he could handle being touched either. Not by somebody who isn’t Will.

He takes a nonchalant mouthful of his beer as he waits for Darren to answer. It’s not like it’s something new: Mia’s been here for months now, having left New York for LA and her old job for one at Fox. However, it’s the first time Chris has really acknowledged it, not because he’s been avoiding the issue but because he hasn’t known whether it needed acknowledging. Mia lives here now, and that’s that really.

Darren shrugs a shoulder, eyeing Chris thoughtfully as he takes a mouthful of his own beer. Chris wishes he wouldn’t look at him like that sometimes, wouldn’t look at him like Chris is some mystery he’s trying to unravel, like his every word has some deeper meaning. Darren appreciates the unknown when it comes to everything – and everyone – else, doesn’t need to label feelings and people and states of existence, but somehow when it comes to Chris it’s different; when it comes to him Darren gets this thirst for knowledge.

"It’s awesome," he says finally, shooting Chris a grin – he’s noticed before how Darren’s entire _being_ seems to illuminate when he talks about his girl. "I mean it’s fucking _weird_ , her always being here, but it’s awesome."

Chris hums around his bottle – he gets that. He has so much admiration for them, really; he isn’t sure how he’d survive if Will was as far away from him as Mia had been from Darren. They found their ways to make it work, though: complete honesty, total trust, and making the most of the time they had together. On the weekends when Mia would fly in from New York, she and Darren would barely leave his house and the girls in makeup would curse under their breath when he’d saunter back on to the lot covered in hickeys, sex-satisfied grin on his face.

"Are things more...stable?" He doesn’t even know what he’s asking and he blames the beer for getting him into what could potentially be very deep waters.

Darren just grins again, says, "We were never _un_ stable.” But he’s not insulted, he’s Darren and doesn’t get pissed easy, almost never at Chris. He bumps his knee against Chris’s under the blanket. "If you mean does she still have a _booty call”_ – he makes air quotes around the two words – “in New York, then yes." In what he probably thinks is a lascivious manner, he waggles his eyebrows.

"A booty call." Chris wrinkles his nose. "Really?"

"That’s what the kids are calling it."

"And you’re okay with it?" He’s curious, he really is, because he kind of thought it was always just about staving off the loneliness, the whole _other people_ thing, and now that Darren and Mia are together, he’s surprised that there’s still that need for either of them to be with anyone else.

"Nothing’s changed," Darren tells him easily but his expression is suddenly serious, like it matters to him that Chris knows this isn’t something he jokes about. "We’re still the same as we always were, we still have what we always had, and one of the things she has is feelings for a guy that isn’t me. The world is a fucking big place, it’s filled with a fuckton of incredible people and Mia is a tiny person with a lot of love. God, it’s a little crazy, don’t you think, to expect her to channel all that love into just little old me?"

Which is a really interesting way of looking at it, Chris muses.

He isn’t going to ask what that means about Darren and his side of the bargain, doesn’t want to hear him say it out loud. This is Darren after all, who craves touch and affection and love; who wouldn’t know a personal boundary if it smacked him in the face (hence his getting under Chris’s skin the way he has); and who has so much to _give_. Chris is pretty sure he knows the answer and he’s pretty sure the answer isn’t something he wants to hear.

"And you?" Except there he is, asking. And there’s Darren, doing that thing again where he looks at Chris like he needs to know exactly what makes him tick. Like he can’t bear the not knowing – Darren doesn’t want to change him, he just wants to _know._ Like he’s Sherlock Holmes and Chris is his latest case.

"And I," he says, with a half smile and a raise of his beer bottle in Chris’s direction, "had you."

"And now?" Chris’s heartbeat is thundering suddenly and he has to force himself to hold Darren’s gaze.

"And now..." Darren echoes, letting the sentence disappear into the silence of the room.

Oh, Chris thinks. _Oh._

 

~~

 

It’s another fairly innocuous comment one lazy evening that really gets Chris thinking. He’s lounging on the bed, back against the headboard and book on his lap, when Will wanders out of the en suite towel drying his hair. He makes some throwaway remark about some dream he’s had about Darren Criss.

The thing is, Chris isn’t convinced it’s all that much of a throwaway comment at all; it’s starting to feel like Will is dropping Darren into conversation more and more often. Chris kind of wishes he’d just say whatever it is that he’s really thinking, this guessing game is making him edgy.

"I am increasingly convinced that you have a crush on our Darren Criss," he replies, hoping it sounds casual. He’s an actor after all, he has a fucking Golden Globe: this should be easy.

" _Everyone_ has a crush on him," Will retorts with that easy smile that still makes Chris’s stomach flip. "I actually think he might have put something in the goddamn water. Maybe he really is Harry Potter and has us all under a spell."

He waggles his eyebrows and Chris exaggerates a sigh. "Dork."

Will pouts. "You say that like it’s a bad thing. Also, if I have a _crush_ then what do you have?" His voice is a little muffled as he pulls his tee over his head and Chris’s world is instantly a little less bright. He doesn’t _mean_ to objectify his boyfriend but everything seems better when Will isn’t wearing a shirt. Chris can’t deny it.

"I don’t understand your game plan," Chris says once Will is fully clothed and sits cross-legged on the end of the bed. "Are you telling me to go and fuck someone else, someone else being Darren? Is that where this is heading?"

Will shrugs. God, he’s never fazed by anything ever. It’s very disconcerting.

"I didn’t say that exactly, no, but if that was something that you wanted to do... Well, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to it."

 _Well,_ Chris thinks, _fuck_.

"But you and I talked about getting married. One day, in the very distant future."

Will raises an eyebrow, looks at Chris like he’s the one not making sense here, like _Chris_ is the one suggesting his boyfriend – his _future husband_ – go and have sex with one of their closest friends.

"And," Chris continues, raising his own eyebrow in return, "I am not aware of a version of the vows that includes, ‘ _forsaking all others with the exception of Darren Criss.’"_

Will wraps a hand around Chris’s ankle, thumb gently stroking against the protruding bone. For once his touch does nothing to calm the racing of Chris’s heart against his ribs.

"We’ve always made our own rules," Will says. "I kind of figured we’d write our own vows, too – except we’d probably have to leave that part unspoken. You’re my forever too, baby, you know that, but who says that’s mutually exclusive? Why does you loving me mean you can’t love Darren?"

"Is that what you want? A relationship like they have? Is there someone else, for you I mean?"

"What I _want_ " – Will is so earnest, his eyes so full of love – "is you. I want us to be the best we can possibly be without getting hung up on how other people think relationships should be. It’s also worth noting that I’ve witnessed polyfi relationships that are more stable than some monogamous ones. It’s _Darren_ and yeah, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have him here, with us –" He trails off, a small blush working it’s way up his neck; Chris can barely breathe right now. "Really, Chris, I just wondered if _you_ thought it was worth talking about?"

Is it worth talking about? Chris has no clue. What he does know is that whatever he feels for Darren – and he will admit that it’s a lot – what he feels for Will is on another plane altogether.

It’s a different thing entirely.

Will is solid and reliable and _real_. He’s bone deep _love_ , the likes of which Chris didn’t even think existed until he realized he’d fallen head first into it. Will is what Chris thinks of when somebody says "forever”: his best friend, his closest confidant, the one person he knows will always call him out on his bullshit. His harshest critic and his loudest cheerleader. He’s the person that Chris has allowed to get the furthest in, so far past the walls he built around himself years ago that he barely remembers now that those walls were even there to begin with; he’s the only person who seems to see Chris without even having to look that hard, and who Chris lets unravel him and put him back together, emotionally and sexually.

He’s everything.

Then there’s Darren.

Darren is a whole other beast. Darren is, and always was, like some kind of fantasy, like something from a dream that Chris always expected to wake up from. This tiny-as-fuck ball of energy that wormed his way under Chris’s skin – Chris feels _bewitched_ by him some days. It’s never felt real with him and Darren, maybe because he was never able to call Darren _his_. What they had was never anything you could stick a label on; it was unnameable, unexplainable, and always feeling somehow fleeting.

What Chris remembers the most about kissing Darren is how it always felt like that first downward drop on a rollercoaster, exhilarating and terrifying all at once, and how he always wanted to cling on tighter than he knew how to.

When he kisses Will it feels like coming home.

Perhaps he’s over-complicating things right now. Chris isn’t blind to his own faults and he knows  one of them is making things into a bigger deal than they are, but he’s never going to be a "take the bull by the horns” kind of a guy. That said, this _is_ kind of a big deal.

Chris can still remember his first fight with Will:  ironically, it had been after sex, when the closeness between them had felt both stifling and comforting, and Chris had been unjustifiably scared of it all falling apart. It was still relatively early days for them and at the same time Will had already become Chris’s longest relationship. The enormity of his feelings for Will was daunting already, so much so that he thought it was going to spill out of him one day, an outpouring of _“I love you’s”_ ; like the first time he said it out loud would be the opening of the floodgates and he'd never be able to stop.

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

Will knew. Of course Will knew.

He'd been so tender, leaning on one elbow and looking down at Chris, the smile on his face so soft that it made Chris ache in a million different ways.

“You can have this," he'd said, so gently. “This, me, us, it's a thing you can have; nobody is going to take it away."

Not for the first time it was as if Will had been looking right _at_ him, at the parts of himself that Chris had never let anybody see before now. His words had hit so close to home, were exactly what Chris had been feeling but not saying. It had made tears prick sudden and hot behind his eyes, tears that he blinked quickly and furiously away before Will saw (even though he knew that Will had already _seen_ ). Chris had gone straight to his default setting: armor engaged.

“I'm not _Kurt."_ It came out exactly as snappily as he had intended and he'd jutted his chin out, daring Will to hit him back with a retort that never came.

“Of course you're not," Will had said easily, as though Chris was being utterly ridiculous. Chris knew he was, what he didn’t know was how to stop.

“You've definitely got a chip on your shoulder, though,” and he leaned in to press a kiss to the body part in question, not even reacting when Chris flinched away.

Chris thinks now – because hindsight is a wonderful thing – that had been the moment he’d known that Will was it for him.

“I just don't like people making assumptions,” he’d snapped.

Will had raised an eyebrow. “I'm not assuming anything. And I don't think you're your character either; I know you, remember? That’s the point. I know _you_ , I know what it was like for you – where you came from, what you've been through, how you've been made to feel – and I want you to know that whatever they said, however they made you feel, you’re allowed to _want_ and more than that, you’re allowed to _have._ You can have this, you can have me."

What Chris wanted, so badly, was to reach up and hook an arm around the neck of this wonderful man, pull him down to cover his face in kisses and then make love to him ‘til the sun came up, because somehow Will always knew just what to say. What he did instead was roll his eyes with a sigh and sit up.

From his new elevated vantage point he said, “You don't know me half as well as you think you do. I am not some damaged puppy that needs handling in kid gloves, you didn't pick me up from the _lost boy_ shelter and you don't get to rehabilitate me. I'm fine, _Will,_ and fuck you if you think otherwise."

And then he'd stood up, still buck naked, trying to retain some dignity as he looked for his clothes. Will had regarded him for a moment from the bed and then, as conversationally as though they had been discussing the weather he said, “Fuck you right back, Christopher.” He hadn’t said another word as Chris had huffed his way into his clothes and slammed out of Will’s apartment without even looking back.

They’re different people now from who they were then, or if not different people then they’re in a different place; Chris is no longer afraid to give Will everything, which is fortunate considering he handed his heart over months ago without even really realizing he was doing it. He’d just passed it over with a key to his front door and a stern " _you’d better not lose it."_

He has accepted that Will sees all of him and loves him in spite of it all, in spite of his quirks and his issues. Best of all, he lets Chris love him in return. Now here they are: Will is sitting on the end of their bed and again he’s telling Chris that the things he’s almost to scared to want can be his for the taking.

This time, though, Chris doesn’t want to run.

 


End file.
